Re: PC Circ

[Susan Strini <sstrini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sheila,
    	We are a large public library with many branches and 19 bookmobiles
(with III since May '99).  We use PC circ every weekday to process
bookmobile transactions.  It wasn't designed for this, but III was unable
to come up with anything better for us.  (The 3 community bookmobiles are
able to function online, but not the school or geriatric units.)  
    I have to say that our experience has not been good.   It DOES take a
long time to load.  We load it when the system is slow, but we still get a
huge amount of "Record-in-use" stoppages.  Someone has to actively monitor
it to free these records, and III has not decided whether the records
should be freed or input into an error file, to be processed later (another
burden).
	Three times it has broken down completely and III ended up calling in
their programmers to perform whatever magic it is they do (Judging from our
experience in this, they have not got very strong magic.)  This is one of
those times, in fact.  It has not worked since Monday.  
 	It is also a rather crude tool---but our Bookmobile Manager says she is
writing you about that.
	I DO have to say that III has been not unresponsive to our
complaints/demands, when we cry loud enough.  We still harbor great hopes
(okay, not great--but some) for PC circ.  If you have any questions, please
ask and good luck.
Susan

 At 03:03 PM 1/7/2000 +0000, you wrote:
>We have tested PC Circ with a very small number of transactions and are
>very concerned with its performance.  It seemed to take a very long time to
>load even this small test and its usefulness seems very limited.  We would
>never use it for check-ins anyway but our different loan periods would make
>it very laborious even for check-outs. 
>
>We are particularly concerned about how long it takes to load transactions
>to the live system - does anyone have any experience in this - if a small
>amount takes so long, how would it cope with a whole day's, or even half a
>day's, transactions?
>
> 
>Sheila Smart
>Deputy Head of Systems
>Systems Office
>Library
>Ext: 2316
>
>
>


**************************************
	Susan Strini
	System Administration Coordinator
	St. Louis County Library
	sstrini@xxxxxxxxxx
	314 994-9411 ext 205
**************************************